Claude Berri

Multi-faceted maverick of contemporary French cinema. Berri began his career as an actor and moved behind the camera in the early 1960s, earning critical praise for short films like "Le poulet" (1963)...
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The young movie mogul, who is late filmmaker Claude Berri's son, was given the coin as a charm from his daughter - and when it proved lucky at the Cesar Awards in France on Friday night (24Feb12), he chose to share the good fortune with Jean Dujardin at the Academy Awards on Sunday (26Feb12).
And it worked for the French star, who beat out George Clooney for the honour.
He says, "My daughter gave me a coin and that I had in my pocket. I didn't think we would win the Cesar, and we won. So, a few awards before Jean Dujardin, I told him, put this in your pocket. Then he won.
"I went back to see him, and I said, 'Give me back my daughter's coin,' and it was in my pocket (when we won for Best Film)."

Berri, who made classic movies like Jean De Florette and Tess - for which he received an Academy Awards nomination, had to miss out on his moment of Hollywood glory when his film Le Poulet was named the Best Short Film over four decades ago, but his son honoured him while accepting the Globes Best Film prize for The Artist.
The producer said, "In 1965, a young French man directed and wrote and produced a short film and then prayed for a miracle to come and it came... (but) in those days he didn't have enough money to come to Hollywood, to pay the flight ticket, and receive this Oscar.
"This man was my father, named Claude Berri, so it is now almost three years (since) he passed away and it is such an honour... to receive this."

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Honored
Variety reports producer Jerry Bruckheimer (Black Hawk Down) will be receiving the Albert R. Broccoli Award of Excellence at this year's Cinema Expo in June. Past recipients included producers Saul Zaentz, Brian Grazer and Claude Berri.

Sold a 50 percent stake in Renn Productions to Jerome Seydoux and Chargeurs Group

Formed Renn Productions with brother-in-law Paul Rassam

Summary

Multi-faceted maverick of contemporary French cinema. Berri began his career as an actor and moved behind the camera in the early 1960s, earning critical praise for short films like "Le poulet" (1963).<p> Since the formation of his production company RENN in 1968, Berri has been involved with an impressive array of quality films by Claude Zidi, Bertrand Blier and Maurice Pialat, among others. In 1973 he developed a distribution arm, AMLF, which has since handled over 150 films.<p> Among RENN-produced films are Roman Polanski's "Tess" (1979) and the Jean-Jacques Annaud projects "The Bear" (1988) and "L'Amande/The Lover" (1992), the sweaty adaptation of the Marguerite Duras novel. As a director-writer, Berri's output has ranged from the lush pointlessness of "Le Sex Shop" to the muscular epicality of "Jean de Florette" (1986). In the 80s Berri established himself as the prince of film adaptation, beginning with "Jean de Florette", the tale of hunchbacked farmer Jean, a simple, gentle man of indomitable strength (played by Gerard Depardieu), who in the end is destroyed by his villainous enemies. The glowing provincial setting and the morality tale format, dappled with a very French obsession with Man versus Nature, proved critically and commerically fortuitous for Berri. Its companion, "Manon des sources/Manon of the Spring" (1986), starred Emmanuelle Beart in a less classically achieved continuation of the Florette saga.<p> His next valentine to the stout "tradition of quality" corpus is "Germinal" (1993): a box office bonanza in Europe which was an adaptation of Zola's grand novel of the same name. A work of great length and stolidity (185 minutes in the mines with fashionably emaciated young miners) it starred Depardieu and Miou-Miou and an army of extras. Reaching the 30 million dollar benchmark, "Germinal" became one of the most expensive French films ever made.<p>Berri has also spent much of the 90s as producer on high profile features including Jean-Jacques Annaud's "The Lover" (1992), Patrice Chereau's "Queen Margot/La reine Margot" (1994) and Josiane Balasko's "French Twist" (1995).

Name

Role

Comments

Darius Berri

Son

born c. 1987; mother, Sylvie Gautrelet

Julien Berri

Son

born on June 14, 1968; mother, Anne-Marie Rassam; appeared in "La Reine Margot/Queen Margot"

Thomas Berri

Son

born c. 1972; mother, Anne-Marie Rassam

Sylvie Gautrelet

Companion

together from c. 1984

Hirsch Langmann

Father

Polish

Arlette Langmann

Sister

edited or co-edited most of Maurice Pialat's films

Anne-Marie Rassam

Wife

married c. 1965; divorced; born in Beirut, Lebanon

Jean-Pierre Rassam

Brother-In-Law

died in 1985

Paul Rassam

Brother-In-Law

formed Renn Productions with Berri in 1975

Education

Name

Notes

In 1999, a French court ruled Berri and his production company (Renn Prods.) guilty of wrongly accusing Rene Hardy of betraying Jean Moulin, a Resistance leader, as depicted in his film "Lucie Aubrac". The director was ordered to pay damages of 40,000 francs to Hardy's family. --From The Hollywood Reporter, June 4-6, 1999.